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After the introduction of forced recruitment in occupied Luxembourg, a general strike broke out on 31 August 1942, paralysing the small country and attracting worldwide media attention. The uprising was brutally put down by the enraged Nazi occupying forces. The strike memorial is now a place for reflection.
After the walkout in the Wiltz leather factory, the strike quickly spread to the whole of Wiltz and subsequently to many other localities nationwide. Numerous strikers were arrested by the Gestapo and sentenced in summary proceedings by court martials. As an immediate deterrent retaliation, 21 patriots (including one German) were executed in the ’SS special camp‘ Hintzert (concentration camp) in violation of international law.
The country was in shock and the strike could not prevent the subsequent introduction of forced recruitment, initially of those born between 1920 and 1924. Until the liberation of Luxembourg by the US Army in September 1944, the cohorts 1925 to 1927 were added.
More than 10,000 young Luxembourgers were ordered to take up military service, and more than 3,600 young women had to serve in the Reich Labour Service or the War Relief Service. But there were also 1,500 who volunteered for service in the Wehrmacht.
Several thousand deserted despite the death penalty if the opportunity arose. At the front, the forced conscripts suffered/had to mourn approximately 2,800 dead and missing. Over 1,500 returned injured or mutilated. Almost every family in the country was affected by this immeasurable suffering and post-war trauma.
Wiltz was chosen as the site for a monument of national reflection and mourning over the calamities suffered. In cooperation with several resistance movements, Kazettlers and the deportees, donations were collected for the ’strike monument’.
On 30 September 1956, the monument made of Wiltz slate, a 23-metre high tower, in form of a lighthouse, above a crypt for those murdered in the concentration camps, was inaugurated.
On the roadside, a relief of red sandstone depicts the struggle of the biblical ’David against Goliath‘ and symbolises the courageous resistance of the Luxembourgers against the superior Third Reich.
The rear side illustrates patriots collapsing under the bullets of the firing squad in the Hintzert concentration camp (KZ).
The monument stands as a memorial to the free world to each day stand up against violence, oppression and disregard for human rights.
Every year on 31 August, a memorial ceremony is held to commemorate the brave victims who stood up for and sacrificed their lives for a future of peace, freedom and international understanding in the world.